NationStates Jolt Archive

Rhodri Llewellyn rose slowly. Parliament was hushed, already knowing what the leader of the Patriot Party was going to say. Just the other day, the Patriots had withdrawn from the Government, presumably on the grounds that the Nationalist leadership was no longer so objectionable as to justify "Madame Speaker, Honorable Members, I would wish to make a motion of no confidence in the sitting Government."

Sanan Ffoulkes, the largely ceremonial Speaker of the Parliament, frowned deeply as she listened to Llewellyn's words. "Is there a second?"

"Second!" called out Henri Calvin.

"The motion is seconded." announced Ffoulkes. "Is there an objection to the motion?"

"I object..." began Languareth Parry, a Liberal MP, almost poerfunctorily. There was, in truth, no point to the discussion. There was no doubt how everyone would vote or what the outcome would be. All the Nationalists and Patriots voted in favor. Labor and the Liberals voted against. The motion passed.

OOC:not to be picky, but it would help if we knew the background of your nation and what these people stand for

OOC: Would you also be willing to describe each party, and what they stand for?

"Good evening. This is Cunvelyn Daykin and we are here today with the leaders of all four major Danaan political parties: the Right Honorable Minverva Karamanlis, Abraham Goldfarb, Rhodri Llewellyn, and Henri Calvin for the first debates of the election. Mr. Calvin, the first question is for you. Ever since the Shattering, immigration into the Resurgent Dream has been at an all time high. If elected, what would be the policy of the Nationalist Party on this issue?"

"Well..." began Calvin as he looked over the podium, standing with the other three candidates on a stage in a large, heavily televised public debate "...I don't think that we should just hand out Danaan citizenship to anyone who wants it. This isn't a charity. Now, that isn't to say that a Nationalist Government would turn away legitimate asylum seekers or that we would not value people who want to bring something productive to our nation. However, we cannot allow our national character to be eroded. Democracy does not work, and never has worked, as an abstract relationship between disembodied citizens, as Mrs. Karamanlis thinks it does. Freedom can only thrive in definite countries with definite histories. Immigration, especially Third World immigration, erodes the fundamental basis of our democracy, replacing our people with peoples accustomed to despotic forms of government. That is why I say we need to begin using serious force to prevent illegal immigration, to raise the bar on our standards for citizenship, to decrease the number of permanent or semi-permanent work visas issued, and, most importantly, to insist that all Danaans speak not only English but the second language of the Principality in which they live."

OOC:not to be picky, but it would help if we knew the background of your nation and what these people stand for

ooc: All easy enough to find out if you do some research on your own. TRD has done several election threads in the past, including detailed information on party stances etc, as well as numerous threads that describe the nation and its people. Run a search - it'll turn up. If you're going to involve yourself in someone elses thread, at least be willing to put in a little effort yourself.

The news hit Vegana like a hammer. The Resurgent Dream was trying out some kind of new version of democracy, where the voter could choose multiple parties to vote for.

-"How does that work out? Is this some kind of new fancy thing received from the liberalists?" Says Markus Johansson, member of the democracy movement in Vegana.

-"What's the odds for this poll being declared a failure? More than 200 % of the people has already voted, this just doesn't add up! This just shows what happens when ordinairy people gets to vote" Says Michail Huberts, Member of the Aristocratic movement.

-"Those decadent countries just proves why we have the best system. I mean, if you can vote both for and against immigrants at the same time, every prankster in the nation will vote for several. Who knows what is their Right decision? This must be a very expensive experiment indeed." Says John Roberts of Vegana Ministerium of Truth. "There should be only ONE choice, the right choice ofcourse. That is efficency."

I voted Communists.

I like the colour red, y'see.

Well I do not endorse the Socialist Party

OOC: To all the people who are voting in the poll without much familiarity with the Resurgent Dream, you should probably know that after the fourth party in the list, you're into "comedy option" area. Only the first four parties have any considerable (possibly any at all) parliamentary position. The first four parties (henceforth referred to as the major parties) are neatly lined up from most right wing to most left wing (although there is a right wing skew overall - the most right wing party, the Nationalist Party, is very right wing, the most left wing party, the Labor Party, is quite moderate).

Basically, I wouldn't expect any of the minor parties to get much headway in these elections no matter what people who don't know anything about TRD vote in the poll.

Fortunately, that has nothing to do with the question being posed. I'm a socialist, Xanthal is socialist, and I'm damn well voting socialist. Whether or not they win in this election is not my concern.

Daykin nodded his head. "Our next question is for you, Mr. Llewellyn. In recent years, the use of automation in industry has increased drastically. Many in the labor movement maintain that unrestrained automation threatens the jobs of workers. How would your government respond to this situation?"

"I wouldn't. Llewellyn said, pausing a moment to relish the shock of such a blunt statement. With a smile, he continued. "The market would. As out-dated menial jobs shut down, new high tech jobs open up. Human resources open up so that society can afford to expend less human energy on the simple reproduction of life and turn its attention to hire things. With fewer people needed in factories and just as much wealth being created, society can afford more teachers, more poets, more philosophers. The Resurgent Dream has always been a cultured country. Why would Danaans prefer a career as a slave to material production to a career that broadened their minds? Changes in the structure of the economy, while temporarily painful, are a mark of transition as we move towards an economy ever more oriented towards the highest development of human life and culture."

Fortunately, that has nothing to do with the question being posed. I'm a socialist, Xanthal is socialist, and I'm damn well voting socialist. Whether or not they win in this election is not my concern.

Problem is there is no party called the Socialist Party in that list. If you voted "National Socialist", you damn well voted for the Nazis.

The socialist vote would be split between Labor (moderate socialist) and the Communists (well, you know).

"Mrs. Karamanlis, our next question is for you. There's recently been a great deal of controversy internationally over issues such as artificial intelligence and cloning. The Liberal Party proposes banning these practices in the Resurgent Dream and yet your Government has maintained normal diplomatic relations within entirely AI governments and has accepted many clones as refugees. Is there a discrepancy here?"

"No, there isn't." Karamanlis began firmly. "The issue here is not the one which concerns theologians and philosophers. The issue is not whether or not it is possible for entities of this kind to be people. The issue is that we should NOT try to make people in the first place. Beyond the immense arrogance of playing God, beyond the fact that such a practice violates the most deeply held tenets of almost every religion on Earth, beyond the natural indignation of the human conscience at such an act, success, if possible, brings another life into the world in the most demeaning way imaginable. To create another person, for whatever end, is to deny them their basic dignity as an end in themselves, one of the foundational principles of a free society. The fact that one can never really be sure about the status of such projects, moreover, adds an element of uncertainty to our conception of the person that is very dangerous to how we think about moral issues, that threatens to put personhood on a sliding scale. I don't think I need to go into details on how dark a path such a shift in our moral sensibilities could set us on."

Karamanlis paused intently, straightening where she stood. For obvious reasons, this question had provoked a much stronger response from the Prime Minister than more run of the mill policy questions might. "It might be argued..." she conceded "...that there are some simulated intelligences which are demonstrably non-sapient. This is true. However, even here the process is degrading to the dignity of our people. How harmful is it to the rational dignity of man if entities which he is morally free to regard as things be capable of all he is, so far as all knowable appearances are concerned? How harmful is it to man's moral sensibilities if he is free to regard as things beings outwardly like his fellow men?"

She shook her head slightly. "There is reason to ban this kind of thing that have nothing to do with the debates about whether or not certain sorts of entities are truly rational. It is precisely our profound regard for the innate dignity of all genuine rational persons, of whatever sort, that requires us to ban any research into making people or convincing simulations thereof."

"Mr. Goldfarb, our next question is for you. A number of high profile personalities have recently been agitating for greater restrictions on the fur industry, describing it as cruelty to animals. The Labor Party has no official position on this question. What is your view, Minister?"

Goldfarb paused a moment. Evidentally, that was quite an unexpected question. "My responsibility is to the thousands of Danaan families employed in the fur industry at all levels, from trappers in Ambara to tanners in Armonvale. The fur industry is in a slump in recent months. Thousands of Danaan fur and leather workers have been cast out from their jobs, where some of them have worked for literally decades. Downward pressure on wages is increasing. We're talking about an actual industry here, not some abstract philosophical question about animals. We're talking about the lives and livelihoods of working people. In society, people do live off of animals. None of these notables are challenging that. They're just targeting one industry so as to look like activists. The anti-fur movement is a celebrity fad, no more."